


Time (isn't made out of lines)

by Anonymous



Category: Turn Back Time - WAYV (Music Video), WayV RPF
Genre: Because Ten, But Ten's Character Kinda Hits On Everyone (Especially Winwin), Mutant Powers, No Romance, Team Up, Time Travel, WayV 威神V 'Turn Back Time' MV concept
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-16
Updated: 2021-01-16
Packaged: 2021-03-14 10:47:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28794153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: A remote research-cum-prison facility for the study of mutant humans is about to receive its final visitor, before the clock runs out.
Relationships: WayV Ensemble & WayV Ensemble
Comments: 6
Kudos: 16
Collections: Anonymous





	Time (isn't made out of lines)

**Author's Note:**

> Time isn't made out of lines. It is made out of WayVs. That is why leekbongs are...
> 
> Yeah.
> 
> Honestly the violence isn't that graphic, but as a favour to the squeamish I'm tagging on the side of caution. Also questionably RPF but since I am blending their idol personas with their MV characters and they all use their idol names...eh. It's kinda both.

Ten thanked him for his time, then cut his throat. 

The iridescent pink key card which the man had managed to produce after only a few minutes spent in Ten’s company lay idly beside his body. Ten wiped his butterfly knife clean on the security officer’s uniform before flipping it back and sliding it into his belt, then reached down to procure the card he’d worked so hard to secure—well, if the trail of bodies scattered throughout this fancy little facility was considered hard work.

Ten checked the information circulating the black datasphere quickly. Where he was going he wouldn’t be able to access it with his PD. Word on the ‘sphere hadn’t changed much, so Ten flicked the device off and made his exit. With the current chaos nobody would be checking in on this floor of the compound any time soon, or know what to do even if they did. His earlier transmission to the real research base was guaranteed to have gotten through by now, leaving the way was as clear as it was going to be. 

Dropping out from the fourth floor window onto the raking cornice that formed the apex of the third-floor façade—physical proof these bastards had way too much money to burn on blatant cover ups—Ten slunk like a fox as he made his way down and around the building until he arrived at the spot he stashed his air-sailor. Without so much as a look back he keyed in the anti-grav code and climbed up onto the narrow deck. Firing up the thruster and engaging the clutch, Ten moved it into gear and took off under the cover of twilight. 

The genuine research compound was remote, a good two hours out from the already secluded smokescreen bureau meant to be the public-facing project centre, in the middle of an industrial wasteland. Ten held onto the crossbar of the air-sailor as he leant back off the edge to enjoy the view of the dank, foggy hell encompassing the bones of abandoned machinery and decaying factory towers. He brushed his hand through his hair, taking in the breeze that came with pushing the air-sailor a little past its limits. If all went to plan, he wouldn’t be using it again. 

The V-shaped research compound, prison facility, whatever you wanted to call it, was nested within the murky fog, elevated from its surroundings, inaccessible by foot—probably a security thing. Ten was fairly certain he had seen the lights of a departing transport pass him on the way to the compound, so he exercised little caution as he brought his air-sailor down to the landing pad. No reason to stash it this time. He liked to arrive in style. 

Reaching out with his powers, he detected the distinct thoughts of at least two people who were in or near the landing bay, in addition to others in the background. Neither of them were monitoring the cameras, judging by their thoughts. With a grin, Ten swiped the pilfered security card to open the large electronically sealed doors. A woman, the one who had been desperately stockpiling various medical tools and equipment from what Ten had extracted earlier, looked up in shock from where she stood over several metal suitcases. Ten didn’t hesitate, flicking his blade across the room before she had a chance to properly react. She fell, the cry dying in her chest as she slumped over the open case filled with meticulously labelled bottles and syringes. 

The whirring hum of a stun-gun firing up behind him was not a surprise either. The man who had been furiously panicking while cussing out the coworkers who’d already escaped was exactly where Ten expected, by the landing bay’s central computing system, where he’d been trying to trace coordinates for nearby flight craft. Before the gun could charge up, Ten ducked out of range and then launched himself at the man, grappling with him until he was able to get a good enough hold to snap his neck.

Job done, Ten plucked the ring of keys, which had made quite the noise as the body hit the floor, off the man’s belt and tied it to his own, figuring it might be useful later. He crossed the room again to retrieve his blade from the woman’s body, nudging her corpse off the metal suitcase she had slumped over with his foot. Once pushed onto her back, he withdrew the butterfly knife sitting dead in the centre of her left eye, blood still trickling out of the wound to pool on the floor, before turning back to the computer deck. The last several transmissions he pulled up consisted of urgent requests to various departments for secure large transport to be sent to the facility. As the transmissions had been left on read, Ten figured he probably didn’t have to worry about it, but for good measure he typed out, “Transport request nullified, alternative transport found,” and sent it to all open channels. 

With the way things were now, it was almost a guarantee no one was coming, but regardless Ten went out and dragged his air-sailor into the landing bay and sealed the doors from within using the main computer. Everybody remaining in the facility, whatever their status, should be trapped in here with him ideally. Which meant it was time to get to the real business. Ten moved from the computer deck to the tannoy switchboard and decided it was time to announce his arrival. Flipping open the switches, he picked up the transceiver and sat devil-may-care on the desk as he shared his first broadcast.

“Hello, boys. It’s your soon-to-be-favourite superhero Ten here. Sorry to introduce myself off the cuff, but you’ve all been here awhile and I figure you might be getting a little stir-crazy. So, thinking it over, if you’re willing to sit pretty for a bit you might find yourselves in a very different position than you’ve gotten used to in those dank little cells. In return, well, we can discuss the specifics, but all I’m really looking for is a little help. Nothing too much. Look forward to getting to know you.”

He switched off and enjoyed the thoughts pouring through his consciousness in response to his little radio show—a mix of fury and desperation: “Take me, I can help you,” “Fucking kill you, bastard,” “It’s a trap, it has to be,” “They’ve never talked to us before, not like that,” “The fuck is happening out there?” “Is it my chance?”

Ten hopped off the desk and move to the triangular-shaped doorway leading into the rest of the prison compound. The key card continued to do its magic, unsealing the doors to reveal a long, grungy hallway, industrial gray and utilitarian in design. Ugly as sin, in Ten’s opinion. The sound of creaking pipes and steam bursting through the overhead vents formed a background hum that provided an ambient groove as Ten walked the narrow hallway, letting his body move in time with the pulse of it. Wasn’t much of a stage but you could never quite stamp out the dancer in someone anymore than you could stamp out the mutation, not that they’d never tried.

After a few minutes of interested observation walking past empty glass cells (human-sized pet shop displays, he was pretty sure), Ten paused to listen carefully past the shaking of the pipes from inside the walls. Ten cocked his head and smiled. 

“Oh, someone’s already gotten himself out.” 

Ten casually followed the wall with his fingertips, until he came to a spot below a square access panel in the ceiling. He took out his microscrambler and made quick work of the sealing mechanism. The door flipped open and hung downward while Ten listened intently for the person hidden up in the crawlspace. He couldn’t deny, exactly, that it was sometimes difficult to separate the physical sense of hearing from the psychic litany of thoughts in his head, but when it seemed certain that the person whose thoughts he was tracking was not immediately above him, he moved into action. 

Ten sprung upwards, grasping the edges of the entrance panel as he hauled himself up. The crawlspace was tall enough, but narrow, the pipes running along the walls bleeding steam into the sweltering atmosphere. Despite a distaste for such humidity, Ten confidently made his way down the narrow corridor. It wasn’t very long before he heard footsteps take off ahead of him. Ten smiled and gave chase.

“Oh, don’t run, baby,” Ten sang out, “I’ve come so far to see you.”

The footsteps continued to flee down the corridor, but they weren’t half as cacophonous as the fearful thoughts streaming out among them.

“You’re so loud,” Ten laughed. 

He came to the turn of another corner when a pair of feet swung from up above, aiming to land a rib-cracking blow to his chest. Ten bent back effortlessly, spine parallel to the ground as the attacker missed. Ten reached up and grabbed the hem of his loose vest, yanking him down in an awkward tumble before the attacker could still his own momentum. Ten rolled to his side to avoid the incoming crush, but only long enough for the loud rattle of the other’s body slamming onto the grates to echo around the hall before Ten was rolling back overtop him to pin his prey down.

Angry, panic-widened eyes set deep beneath a strong brow looked up at him. The face was young, more so than himself, Ten was pretty sure, although they were both of a size. He had a hungry kind of look, like an underfed raptor, but short of the viciousness it ended up somewhere in the realm of pitiably cute. While Ten was studying his face, the young mutant did not give up his attempts to struggle free in spite of being winded from the fall.

“Baby, baby, there’s no need,” Ten crooned as he contorted to keep the young man under him despite his efforts. “I can hear it in your thoughts. I ain’t here to hurt you.”

The man lessened his struggling at that, gasping out, “You can hear?”

“I can hear.”

“You’re a mutant?” 

Heh, it was remarkable how easily the young man bought in to his words, but that might just be the gullibility of youth. At any rate, Ten didn’t complain when things went easily.

“Don’t tell my mother,” Ten joked, leaning back a little on his ankles. “Now I am going to let you up, but I’m gonna ask you not to run this time.”

The young man made a sour expression—a disdainfulness that surely had a charm for the emotionally masochistic, Ten thought—but he agreed nonetheless to Ten’s demand. “Fine. But you owe me an explanation immediately.”

Ten rolled off him and pulled himself to a stand using the pipes along the wall. “Do I?”

“How did you get here?” The other man said, breath still raspy as he stood to meet him face to face. “If you get me caught again—”

“Killed everyone on the way in.”

The “What?” resounded like a bell through his mind.

“Is how I got here.” Ten smiled. “Now, if you get yourself caught again after all my work, that’s on you.” He clapped the other on the shoulder. “But there ain’t any of the whitecoats here to cage you up right now, so I say treat yourself to some time outside these walls.”

“You sure?”

“...Hah, like I can keep track? Think what you want,” Ten said with a wave. “Anyway, this place is cramping my style. I trust you know an exit? More than a few, if you’ve been hiding here that long—how long exactly?” 

“Seven months.” The young mutant pushed past Ten and began walking with purpose at his cue.

“In these little corridors?” Ten whistled as he kept pace listlessly behind him. “Didn’t even know a mutant could survive that. The fuck do you eat?”

“I wasn’t stuck here! It’s just the safest place,” he replied, ducking under a low pipe. “I can sneak around out there, in the areas they don’t observe well, if I want. So long as they believe I’m not here anymore, it’s safe.” 

“You gonna tell me how you managed that?”

The man stopped to look at him, then walked into a narrow side passage. He crouched at a certain part of the floor, putting his hand upon it. Without so much as a warning the metal silently turned on itself beneath his hand, reforming and parting to create a hole in the ceiling. The man dropped down onto the conference table in the room below.

Ten followed suit and jumped down. With a shake of his hair he stood up from his three-point landing and hopped to the floor. “Neat trick.”

The other man stayed standing on the table and reached up to reform the metal ceiling into place, leaving it looking no different than it had before.

Ten slumped down into one of the office chairs as he watched, not bothering to tell him it was unnecessary. “So with that kinda talent the reason you never got yourself out of here is...?”

The young man, whatever else could be said, wasted little time. Before Ten could finish asking, he’d jumped down from the table and was already at one of the file cabinets of the dingy, fluorescent-lit office, warping the metal siding to access the cabinet’s contents. 

“The facility’s outer wall is made of a non-metal composite,” he spoke as he dug around the cabinet. “Don’t think they knew how good a guarantee that ended up being to keep me here. No way through without heavy tools. And they keep the landing bay too well-monitored.”

“Yet they never found you?” Ten said, almost impressed.

“The resonance,” he replied, tapping a metal wall with the file folder he’d just freed, “is a far better shield than they could have guessed either.”

“You certainly got familiar with the place,” Ten said, coming over to pluck the folder from his hands. The man rolled his eyes and started on another drawer.

Ten looked inside. An employee roll, with addresses, security numbers. Interesting.

“Hun, I like your thirst for revenge. It’s very thorough. You got a name?”

The mutant looked at him suspiciously and a distinct, “Don’t tell him,” ran through his head. Ten couldn’t help but smile as the man uttered, “Xiaojun,” and turned back to freeing the next folder. Wasn’t like Ten would trust himself either. 

Ten dropped back to his chair and listened in as this supposed “Xiaojun” mentally read through the document he’d pulled out. Manual override codes. Very interesting.

“So...you’re here to free everyone?” Xiaojun asked over his shoulder, as if he already knew the answer. 

“We’ll get who we need,” Ten said with a smile. Oh, to have the optimism and confidence of youth. “If someone doesn’t wanna play nice, though—”

“Fine by me,” Xiaojun cut him off, although the reverberation of his emotions suggested some part of him felt otherwise. After being cooped up in the walls for seven months, however, Ten wasn’t exactly surprised by the self-preservation instinct in Xiaojun’s answer. Ten himself was often told he had no such thing, but that was a blatant lack of observation and an unwillingness to live on the edge. Precisely because Ten had just enough self-preservation for his part, he could recognize it better in others than others could in him. Xiaojun wanted out, absolutely, and Ten was rather counting on it.

“How familiar are you with the other inmates here?” Ten asked casually.

“Never met them.”

“No group therapy sessions?” Ten bit at one of his painted nails heedless of what it was doing to the coat.

Xiaojun huffed humourlessly. 

“So you got nothing?”

“Not nothing,” Xiaojun said under his breath. “I heard...I heard a lot, kept a lot of it up here for later.” He tapped his head.

“Who’s the most dangerous?”

“Some of them have been in isolation for ages. You tell me,” Xiaojun said sarcastically. 

Ten rolled his eyes.

“Physically,” Xiaojun said quietly, leaning back against the filing cabinet he’d just raided, “there’s one guy they keep under constant sedation, chained up like crazy, too, I hear. If I had a guess...”

“Perfect.” Ten sprung up. “Lead the way!”

“You’re kidding me.”

“You said he’s sedated, sounds like an ideal first conquest. If you’re scared, just leave it to me.” Ten swiped his card against the door code reader, leaning back as the double doors parted to reveal a long corridor. “You don’t have to come farther than the cell door. Now which way?”

Reluctantly, Xiaojun dropped the files on top of the cabinet and crossed the room. He stepped out of the office and headed left. “Cell assigned 07 111.”

“Anything else you kept up there?” 

“Inmate Code,” Xiaojun said, “Warlike - Inducement Nonviable.”

“I see they enjoyed labelling their science projects.” Ten dialled the sudden spike of fury down to a simmer as he spoke. He was too cool-headed to let it spill over these days. He had to save some of it for future plans after all. “How long has he been here?”

“He’s the only one with a three digit string. I suspect he’s been stuck here the longest, of the still-living ones anyway.”

They weren’t too far from the cell, it appeared, for Xiaojun’s footsteps soon slowed, cautiously hanging back the closer they came to a highly secured door, with physical bolts and multiple padlocks adorning it in addition to the electronic seal. 

“Ooh, fun,” Ten said with a moue as he took the keys from his belt and began testing them out on the various padlocks. “Get the bolts for me, would you?”

Xiaojun nervously unbolted the door, while Ten did his experiments. Once Ten got the final padlock off he looked to his anxious companion, who was now hovering further back up the hallway.

“Don’t worry, doll, I got this. You don’t have to go see the big scary sleeping mutant if you don’t want to.”

“I’m not your doll.” Xiaojun’s scowl grew deeper as he spoke, but he didn’t approach a step closer. 

Ten grinned and used the card to swipe the door open. As he stepped into the room, he spotted an immediate problem. There, on the table, was a glass of water and several blue and yellow pills. And, as promised, the room was covered in chains from floor to wall to ceiling. The only thing that ran counter to expectation was that the chair they centered on was currently empty. Well, that and the number of chains that had snapped.

“Oh?” Ten said, making towards the empty chair. It was seconds before he found himself being lifted by his throat and pinned against a wall. Whatever he might have wished to say was no longer possible with his windpipe being crushed in real time. Ten coughed, gasping, as he observed the man holding him up with only a hand. He was tall, yes, but his strength was in no way proportionate to his lissome appearance. Not that there was any question of his mutant status just looking at those broken chains. The slender fingers about his neck gave no quarter, and Ten might have thought the man looked almost feral as he held him there, except for the vulnerable note in those phoenix eyes of being at some kind of loss.

Ten reached a hand out and tweaked his nose. 

The mutant dropped him suddenly, and Ten crashed to the floor, laughing hoarsely as he rubbed his sore neck. The unnaturally strong mutant pushed his foot to Ten’s chest, threatening to crush him under it with the slightest motion. “Are you one of them!?” his speech came slightly slurred, as if waking from a clinging dream.

Ten laughed louder still, looking up at him. “Oh no, sweetheart. The one thing,” he coughed raspily for a moment, before finding his voice again, “you need to know about me is that I am one of a kind.”

The breathing of the man above him was heavy, almost sluggish, and it didn’t take imagination to pin why his speech was off. “Withdrawal’s a bitch, ain’t it?” Ten said. “They must have been keeping you under some heavy stuff.”

The man’s eyes widened then narrowed again, breath starting to regulate a little as he refocused.

“Still, that you got yourself out as soon as they missed your dose...” Ten whistled. The man’s expression remained aloof and suspicious as Ten catalogued those features, trying to see past the remote veneer, searching the depths of those dark eyes. “But you know, I heard you calling to me, before, that pretty, little voice,” he said, leaning his head forward even though the foot on his chest failed to give way. “You were singing a different tune earlier.”

Ten looked pointedly at him, and then at the boot still pressing him down, and said, “You want out, right? Do just about anything for that? Then I gotta proposition I think you’re gonna like.” As he spoke, he reached his hand up to the back of the man’s knee and tickled it just for his own amusement. The mutant stumbled back immediately, halfway across the room in a second, crouched defensively, with a confused but wary expression.

“Once you come down from those,” Ten amended as he stood up, looking down at him sympathetically, “or even while you do, I guess, I’d have use for a bodyguard, crowd control, whatever you wanna call it.”

“Why?”

“Not everyone’s going to be as sweet-tempered as you,” Ten said with a sarcastic grin, running his fingers along his rather tender neck.

“You’re getting us out of here?” That bit of hope through the waves of doubt could have hurt a softer heart, but it wasn’t like Ten had a place left for that kind of emotion.

“That’s the plan, sweetheart. You got a name?” 

“Number, 07-111, letter code, W-IN,” the mutant mumbled.

Ten looked at him with disapproval. “The real answer?”

He shook his head mutely, and the thoughts that crossed Ten’s mind suggested his cognition, while clearer than his speech, was still sluggish from the aftereffects of the suppression drugs. Bastards, Ten thought.

Ten shrugged, reaching out to help the man stand up properly. He was waved off as the mutant moved almost gracefully to his feet. At full height, his eyes looked inherently dismissive from Ten’s angle, but the face was oddly cute for his distant demeanour. It made Ten want to tease him.

“Oneoneone? Oneone?” Ten mused, tapping his fingers against his lips. “Nah, number’s the name of my game. Wouldn’t want you cramping my style.” He circled around him, looking him over carefully before stopping again in front of him. As the mutant did not respond to Ten’s suggestions at all, he decided to stop playing around. “How about we go with Winwin for now?” 

He looked up decisively into his eyes. Half of getting people to agree with you was just being confident, and Ten didn’t want to waste more time if he wasn’t getting a reaction.

“I don’t know. It’s fine. Whatever,” the man replied slowly.

“Wonderful,” Ten said with a smile. “Then I want you to help me visit the others first. Might need a bit of protection in cases of volatile reception.” Ten patted his biceps meaningfully as he spoke. Winwin, despite his super-human strength, immediately flinched and drew back yet again.

“Cute.” Ten muttered under his breath and threw a wink at him over his shoulder as he began to exit the containment chamber. 

Xiaojun was waiting cautiously behind a support pillar up the hallway, ready to reform the metal in a moment’s notice to scurry back into the crawlspace if need be.

Ten called out to him. “I’ve acquired us a bodyguard, doll. You can come out now.”

Xiaojun warily approached them while Ten’s newest acquisition glanced coolly over him.

Xiaojun eyed the taller mutant in turn before coming in close to Ten and pulling back his collar to expose the nasty bruise forming around Ten’s neck. 

“Didn’t go as smoothly as you thought it would?”

“It wasn’t like I had a bad time. Our Winwin here just doesn’t know his own strength after being sedated for so long, isn’t it?” 

Winwin didn’t respond, glaring indifferently at them.

That would hardly do, Ten thought, but he would deal with fun later. Business came first.

“So with all your intelligence, who in this den of mildew and misery do we collect next?” Ten asked as Xiaojun’s hands fell to his sides, moving back a step. 

“There’s someone,” Winwin cut in before Xiaojun could speak, to Ten and Xiaojun’s surprise. “They brought someone I knew once. They talked about it, when they were...one day when they were...experimenting.”

“Honey, you don’t know your own name but you remember this guy you knew once?” Ten looked him over dubiously.

Winwin shook his head, raising a hand to clutch at his temple as static resounded throughout his brain.

“Oh, yuck,” Ten said, trying to shield his own mind from the havoc happening in the other’s. With a conscious effort to tune the mental noise out, Ten went to comfort him. “There, there,” Ten crooned, rubbing his hand along the back of his neck. “Sorry to say the withdrawal is gonna be a bad time for a while yet. Muddled things up a bit, they did.”

Winwin didn’t react at first but Ten registered the painful static receding a little. No sooner had it, however, then Winwin appeared to clock his surroundings and once again flinched from the soothing touch.

Ten laughed as he drew his hand back. “So you don’t know him, but you did, and he’s here, or at least you believed it when they told you he was.”

“I—” Winwin said slowly, trying to put it together. Ten kept the mental bleed-through dialled as low as possible. 

“Breathe slowly,” Ten said. “Easier to recall if you stay calm.”

Winwin nodded almost detachedly. “They had me on the table in the lab, they wanted to examine something, some change to the drugs. They were talking about an incoming patient—”

Xiaojun scoffed angrily at that. “Patient.”

Winwin squeezed his head in his palm as he kept going, “And what anesthetic to prepare before the surgery to remove...to remove...”

“Give it a break, we get the gist.”

Winwin swallowed as he stopped trying to recall through the heavy fog.

“I know the one,” Xiaojun said quietly. He looked to Ten. “I think anyway. There’s a guy here, they cut off his wings.”

The sound of super-human strength punching a fist-shaped dent in the wall spooked Xiaojun half to death. Ten, who usually had the benefit of mentally hearing it coming before this kind of thing happened, found himself likewise startled.

“That’s neat,” Ten said, admiring the damage while tuning out the incoherent and unchecked emotional fury that followed. “Starting to get what they meant about inducement being non-viable.”

Xiaojun looked ready to phase back into the wall. 

Ten looked over the still shaking Winwin. “We’ll go get this friend of yours then,” he said. Fallen celestials were an incredibly rare, though not unknown, phenomenon, but one getting caught in a medical experimentation-cum-prison facility for mutant humans absolutely piqued Ten’s curiosity. “No problem. He got a name?”

Winwin didn’t respond. Xiaojun pulled through instead. “In cell 20-10100. Lapsed Undisclosed Celestial - AS. Not sure what the AS stands for.” 

“Oh, I know that one,” Ten said through gritted teeth. He caught himself as Xiaojun and Winwin both stared at him, and he assumed his relaxed attitude again. “That’s ‘Asset Secured.’ They did cut those wings off then.”

“The cell is at the far end of this hallway. The structure is,” Xiaojun paused, “more vertical there.”

“They take a guy’s wings but leave him with space to fly. What kind of sick fucks?” Ten half-laughed. “Well, no reason to delay. We have an escape artist. We have a bodyguard,” he said with a clap to Winwin’s shoulder. “Let’s get our guardian angel!” 

The cell at the far end of the compound glowed from a distance. As they came closer, Ten caught the thoughts of the others in this end, one set coming almost as through water. He knew what he was looking for, however, when he heard the deep voice ring through his head. “What did you do?”

What didn’t Ten do, honestly, he thought to himself with a smile. He whipped out the key card as they approached the door with the label Xiaojun had rattled off. This one was made of some kind of plexiglass, whether because the occupant didn’t require the same degree of reinforcement or it was more up-to-date than the hole they had kept the super-strong mutant in. It allowed Ten to peer into its seemingly empty depths as he spoke to Winwin on his right. “Ready to take point, hero? He might get a bit aggressive out of the gate. You certainly did.”

Winwin nodded silently, staring into the dark ambiance of the cell. Ten swiped the card and the doors unlocked, allowing them into the starkly arranged room. 

“That’s a long way up,” Ten said, looking at the suspended architecture above him, sloping platforms in various states of wear and tear hanging precariously all the way to the top.

“Where is he?” Xiaojun muttered nervously, using Winwin as a shield as he shifted behind them.

“Stay back if you need to, honey. Winwin, come with me.”

The two of them ventured further into the room looking carefully up at the rafters above. Ten signalled with his eyes to the largest platform, where their target had the best opportunity to hide.

“I can’t climb there,” Winwin said.

“Strong boy like you? Should be no problem.”

“I can’t.”

The fearful thoughts coming across to Ten told him it was more of a “won’t” situation, but his weren’t the only thoughts Ten was picking up on. No need for it then. With a smile, Ten grabbed Winwin by one shoulder and said, “Might as well leave this one for later,” as he began to steer them out. He had not finished speaking by the time something attacked them from above, as anticipated. The strength-enhanced mutant shoved Ten out of the way before the two beings collided with a resounding thump against the floor, rolling one over the other in a show of strength and agility. It was a more even match than Ten had expected, although given that one of them wasn’t human, perhaps it was to be anticipated that even super-strength would be challenged by the power behind a celestial being. The struggle finally stopped, however, as Winwin managed to pin the fallen angel, though he had nearly folded himself into a pretzel to do so.

“You,” the fallen angel said, shocked to be staring into a familiar face now that the struggle came to a dead-lock and he had the proper chance to look, “How?”

A grimace overtook Winwin’s face (and Ten’s, courtesy of that damn bleed-through) and he untangled himself immediately, scooting back, an arm wrapped around his legs in a ball as he pressed his other hand to his head. The celestial followed him immediately. 

“Hey man, hey, it’s really.” He paused, looking up at Ten, then at Xiaojun hiding by the entrance, trying to understand what was going on, his expression confused. His ice-blue eyes were strikingly big, and his white hair spoke to his otherworldliness. His physique was unmistakably powerful as well, his defined musculature on plain display, but from what Ten could extract, the intentions to attack from before had altogether faded, replaced by an unusual calm—a stark contrast to his friend’s mental scramble. 

The confused celestial did not wait for explanation however. Instead he turned back with a half-shrug, uncaring as he struggled to find his words again. “It’s really...c’mere,” he huffed out and then enveloped Winwin in a big hug.

Now Ten was just beginning to feel left out. All of the mental static and none of the fun.

“You okay?” the celestial said, chin resting over Winwin’s shoulder. “It’s been so long, man. I can’t believe it.” He drew back and ruffled his white hair. 

Ten could feel the torpor decrease as Winwin reined his thoughts back in, letting go of his attempts to remember all the things locked away in his head.

“Really?” Winwin spoke at last, with a doubting smile. “I don’t really know how long it’s been.”

“You disappeared three years ago, bro.” 

The look on Winwin’s face was somewhere between incredulous and wounded. Three fucking years, thought Ten.

“Kept thinking I’d hear of you in the news or something. The next big movie star, stunt actor, whatever, too busy to keep contact with old friends.” The wistful smile on the celestial’s face would have tugged at Ten’s heart strings had he any.

“You believed that?” Winwin breathed out.

“Eh,” the celestial shrugged with a carefree expression, drawing back to crouch opposite him. “There was a point to where it made sense. But when it stopped...” His expression darkened. “When it stopped making sense, my questions about what happened...I guess in the end they led me here, yeah.”

There was a long silence as Winwin processed his words. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly.

“Nah, not your fault. Guess I’m just as easily led as you are.”

“Did they...they really...?” Winwin didn’t finish his sentence, but his glance over the celestial’s shoulder where his wings once would have been was clear enough.

The celestial looked down. “Yeah,” he said at last, hoarsely. “They did.”

The way Winwin’s fingers curled into fists told Ten it was time to step in again.

“Sorry to interrupt the touching reunion,” he said, looking between them. “But maybe we could do some of the talking while walking? You got a name, angel?”

The celestial looked at Winwin carefully, who looked blankly back.

“Yeah, he doesn’t remember his own name, let alone yours,” Ten said with a wave of his hand. “Just keep your secret identities, all of you, if you want.” He looked between Xiaojun, still in the doorway, and Winwin and the celestial with a roll of his eyes. “We’ll call you Lucas in the meanwhile. Or Lulu, if you prefer. Care to come with?”

Lucas turned to look up, his body language defensive as he spoke, “How about who are you? And how can we trust you? How did you—?”

“The name’s Ten, Lulu—”

“Let’s do Lucas.”

“—and I got you out, and your friend Winwin here,” Ten continued without pause. “And I can get you some footwear, and maybe a shirt if it comes to it, isn’t that enough? Sometimes it’s the little things.” He eyed him head to toe significantly. It wasn’t a chore, to be honest.

“He’ll break us out from here,” Winwin said quietly as he stood up at last. “I don’t think he’s lying about that.”

“But what does he want for it?” Lucas replied ambiguously as he came to his feet.

“Tall,”—Ten caught Xiaojun’s thought overlapping in perfect timing to his own. 

Unaware, Lucas sighed as he rolled his shoulders and his neck, an easygoing expression coming over his boyishly handsome face as he said, “Whatever, not worth over-thinking ‘til we’re out, right?” 

Winwin nodded.

“And you, over there. You’re?”

“Xiaojun.” He finally entered the room, having deemed the situation to be relatively stable after high nerves earlier. “Also you should know he can hear your thoughts,” Xiaojun mumbled as an addendum, gesturing at Ten.

Lucas gave a look somewhere between impressed, appraising and wary at Ten before turning back to Xiaojun. “So, you with him,” Lucas jabbed his thumb in Ten’s direction, “or you one of the other inmates?” 

“I was an inmate. Been here a little longer than you. Just, not in containment.”

Lucas looked a little mistrustful at that.

“I mean I escaped, sort of, but couldn’t really escape the place so I just...” Xiaojun began to defend himself, deflating halfway through.

“He’s been stuck in the walls with nothing to do but silent karaoke for seven months, you’ll have to excuse his awkwardness.” Ten said, going over to grab Xiaojun by the shoulder. The killing glare he got for it didn’t faze him in the least.

“Riiight,” Lucas said slowly. “Well, okay.” He then smiled in a way that was simply unfair to the world, in Ten’s opinion. “Let’s go then?”

“I like that you don’t even ask where,” Ten said. “Xiao-doll, you got a next pick or you want me to take point on this one?”

“Don’t call me that.”

“How many,” Winwin started. “How many people are there here?”

“Right now,” Xiaojun answered, moving forward with sudden keenness, “there are three others. Cell code 11 1011, KU-N, pretty sure that’s for Kinetic Universal - Neutral. 44 101100, HND:ER-Y. Something about Endless Regression, I think. The string’s too long to remember. And cell code 00 10110, Y-ANG:2. All I know is I wouldn’t go anywhere near that guy. Pretty sure both he and the telekinetic guy have lost it completely. From what I overheard anyway.”

“Telekinesis, though,” Ten said, mulling it over in his head. “I like the sound of that. Where’s his cell?”

“Other side of the apex. Near the file room. We might wanna stop there again to grab some more data, if it exists.”

“Let’s see the guy first. Maybe I can get a sense for what we’re dealing with before we spring him.”


End file.
